It’s 2008, and the new Marvel movie directed by Jon Favreau, Iron Man, came out. Due to its success and popularity, this movie started a franchise called the MCU, which stands for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ever since Marvel’s most successful movie, the 2019 Endgame, Marvel hasn’t been the same. However, the new Marvel movie, Thunderbolts, may be the thing that saves the MCU.
The Thunderbolts, like many other movies in the MCU, uses characters from their comic books. Something that the MCU does that makes it unique is that all their movies are connected. Thunderbolts was released on May 2 of this year. The movie was directed by Jake Schreier and stars Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, the main character in the Thunderbolts. The film is currently one of the most popular movies to watch in theaters at the moment, making $76 million in domestic sales on its opening weekend.
As someone who has been watching the MCU since 2012, I was pleasantly surprised by how well this movie turned out. The Thunderbolts doesn’t follow any storylines from any of the comics, but it uses them more as a guideline on how to make the movie. The movie’s run time isn’t short (two hours and six minutes), however, I felt myself wanting more.
“The movie was good; however, I felt like the movie needed to be longer and provide details to different characters,” senior Matthew Hanasab said.
What made this film stand out and gave me hope for new MCU movies is that the Thunderbolts pulls characters from the MCU TV shows as well as movies. What I feel like a lot of Marvel movies are lacking is connection; however, in this movie, it puts characters from four older MCU projects together.
“This is the best MCU movie since Guardians of the Galaxy. 3, Marvel has been creating projects that don’t have connections, which the Thunderbolts fixes.” senior Benji Gotfried said.
One actor who stood out to me was Wyatt Russell, who plays John Walker. He first appeared in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was very popular. He was an antagonist in the TV show. Something that I loved about Thunderbolts is how they added more backstory to his character and showed him as a person, not just a villain.
Overall, every little detail in the movie created a funny, sad and serious film that was created for fans of older MCU films. If you are interested in watching an amazing movie, I highly recommend going now while it’s still in theaters.
